CANNES -- Brandishing an ambition it’s likely no film, including this one, could entirely fulfill, The Tree of Life is nonetheless a singular work, an impressionistic metaphysical inquiry into mankind’s place in the grand scheme of things that releases waves of insights amidst its narrative imprecisions. This fifth feature in Terrence Malick’s eccentric four-decade career is a beauteous creation that ponders the imponderables, asks the questions that religious and thoughtful people have posed for millennia and provokes expansive philosophical musings along with intense personal introspection. As such, it is hardly a movie for the masses and will polarize even buffs, some of whom may fail to grasp the connection between the depiction of the beginnings of life on Earth and the travails of a 1950s Texas family. But there are great, heady things here, both obvious and evanescent, more than enough to qualify this as an exceptional and major film. Critical passions, pro and con, along with Brad Pitt in one of his finest performances, will stir specialized audiences to attention, but Fox Searchlight will have its work cut out for it in luring a wider public.

Shot three years ago and molded and tinkered with ever since by Malick and no fewer than five editors, The Tree of Life is shaped in an unconventional way, not as a narrative with normal character arcs and dramatic tension but more like a symphony with several movements each expressive of its own natural phenomena and moods. Arguably, music plays a much more important role here than do words — there is some voice-over but scarcely any dialogue at all for nearly an hour, whereas the soaring, sometimes grandiose soundtrack, comprised of 35 mostly classical excerpts drawn from Bach, Brahms, Berlioz, Mahler, Holst, Respighi, Gorecki and others in addition to the contributions of Alexandre Desplat, dominates in the way it often did in Stanley Kubrick’s work.

Indeed, this comparison is inevitable, as Tree is destined to be endlessly likened to 2001: A Space Odyssey, due to the spacy imagery of undefinable celestial lights and formations as well as because of its presentation of key hypothetical moments in the evolution of life on this planet. There are also equivalent long stretches of silence and semi-boredom designed, perhaps, to provide some time to muse about matters rarely raised in conventional narrative films.

That Malick intends to think large is indicated by an opening quotation from the Book of Job, in which God intimidates the humble man by demanding, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.” Job is not cited again but is more or less paraphrased when, in moments of great personal distress, a smalltown mother cries out, “Lord, why? Where are you?” and “What are we to you?”

Tree doesn’t answer these questions but fashions a relationship between its big picture perspective and its intimate story that crucially serves the film’s philosophical purposes. Much of the early-going is devoted to spectacular footage of massive natural phenomena, both in space and on Earth; gaseous masses, light and matter in motion, volcanic explosions, fire and water, the creation and growth of cells and organisms, eventually the evolution of jellyfish and even dinosaurs, represented briefly by stunningly realistic creatures, one of which oddly appears to express compassion for another.

Juxtaposed with this are the lamentations of a mother (Jessica Chastain) for a son who has just died, in unexplained circumstances, and for a time it seems that placing the everyday doings of the O’Brien family of a quiet Texas town in the shadow of the seismic convulsions pertaining to the planet’s creation represents an inordinately elaborate way of expressing what Bogart said in Casablanca, that “the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

But while that may be true, it is also the case that those very problems, and everything else that people experience, are all that matter at the time one is experiencing them and are therefore of surpassing importance. Whatever else can — and will — be said about it, Tree gets the balance of its extraordinary dual perspective, between the cosmic and the momentary, remarkably right, which holds it together even during its occasional uncertain stretches.

Least effective is the contemporary framing material centered on the oldest O’Brien kid, Jack, portrayed as a middle-aged man by Sean Penn. A successful architect, Jack looks troubled and preoccupied as he moves through a world defined by giant Houston office towers and atriums shot so as to resemble secular cathedrals. While the connection to Jack’s childhood years is clear, the dramatic contributions of these largely wordless scenes are weak, even at the end, when a sense of reconciliation and closure is sought by the sight of flowers and disparate souls gathering on a beach in a way that uncomfortably resembles hippie-dippy reveries of the late 1960s.

But the climactic shortfall only marginally saps the impact of the central story of family life. Occupying a pleasant but not lavish home on a wide dirt street in a town that matches one’s idealized vision of a perfect 1950s community (it’s actually Smithville, population 3,900, just southeast of Austin and previously seen in Hope Floats), the family is dominated by a military veteran father (Pitt) who lays down the law to his three boys seemingly more by rote than due to any necessity. He’s compulsively physical with them, playfully, affectionately and violently, and yet rigidly holds something back.

Within Malick’s scheme of things, Dad represents nature, while Mom (Chastain) stands for grace. Great pals among themselves, Jack (Hunter McCracken), R.L. (Pitt look-alike Laramie Eppler) and Steve (Tye Sheridan) range all over town and would seem to enjoy near-ideal circumstances in which to indulge their youth.

But working in a manner diametrically opposed to that of theater dramatists inclined to spell everything out, Malick opens cracks and wounds by inflection, indirection and implication. Using fleet camerawork and jump-cutting that combine to intoxicating effect, the picture builds to unanticipated levels of disappointment and tragedy, much of it expressed with a minimum of dialogue in the final stages of Pitt’s terrific performance.

Embodying the American ideal with his clean-cut good looks, open face, look-you-in-the-eyes directness and strong build, Pitt’s Mr. O’Brien embodies the optimism and can-do attitude one associates with the post-war period. But this man had other, unfulfilled dreams — he became “sidetracked,” as he says — and as his pubescent oldest son begins to display a troublesome rebelliousness, fractures begins to show in his own character as well, heartbreakingly so.

Voice-over snippets suggestive of states of mind register more importantly than dialogue, while both are trumped by the diverse musical elements and the rumblings and murmurs of nature, which have all been blended in a masterful sound mix. Emmanuel Lubezki outdoes himself with cinematography of almost unimaginable crispness and luminosity. As in The New World, the camera is constantly on the move, forever reframing in search of the moment, which defines the film’s impressionistic manner.

Production designer Jack Fisk and costume designer Jacqueline West make indispensable contributions to creating the film’s world. That not a single image here seems fake or artificial can only be the ultimate praise for the work of senior visual effects supervisor Dan Glass and his team, while the presence of Douglas Trumbull as visual effects consultant further cements the film’s connection to 2001.

Terrence Malick’s long-awaited drama “The Tree of Life” debuted Monday to a mix of harsh boos and enthusiastic applause at the Cannes Film Festival.

Love it or hate it, Malick’s film starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain was the talk of the festival after a morning press screening preceding its official premiere.

True to form, the elusive Malick skipped the post-screening press conference, leaving Pitt, Chastain and producers to face reporters.

The deeply personal drama from writer-director Malick is told in an epic range of impressionistic exchanges and images: from grand cosmic visuals to the age of the dinosaurs to tender family moments.

Pitt plays a loving but sometimes brutally stern father, with Penn the grown son reflecting on the people and moments that shaped him.

Cannes organizers had hoped to debut the film a year ago, but it was not ready in time.

After several years of filmgoer anticipation -- and nearly 40 years of gestation in Terrence Malick's mind -- "The Tree of Life" was finally unveiled Monday morning to the media at the Cannes Film Festival.

Even before the trailer hit the Web in December, many questions about the mysterious project had bubbled up. How much does Sean Penn's character actually speak? Is there really a dinosaur in the film, and how big is his role ? And what's the darned thing about?

In order, the answers are: Not much (but his weatherbeaten face says volumes); yes, and it's kind of an important part; and, finally, well, the last one is tricky.

Describing the film isn't easy since "Tree" rarely follows a conventional narrative path, and in fact contains only snippets of what most viewers would consider dialogue. And yet there are thousands of words that can, and likely will, be written interpreting Malick's shots. So here goes. (Incidentally, this isn't a review, but an impressionistic take on a movie whose first screening concluded just a short time ago. Also, note that there are spoilers ahead -- not in a traditional, the-butler-did-it sense; you couldn't spoil this film that way if you tried -- but certainly in terms of the arc and individual scenes. And of course if you want to see for yourself, you won't have to wait much longer: Fox Searchlight releases the movie to theaters on May 27.)

The movie starts off with a tragedy in the small-town Texas family of Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien (Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain) circa the middle of the 20th century. The family learns of it by messenger, and we divine that one of their three children is now dead. Mother and father mourn the loss of the child in different ways, a function of their very different constitutions. Mr. O'Brien has some kind of solid, if unremarkable, 1950's job at an airport (though we later learn he always wanted to be a musician). Chastain's character, a devoted housewife, is a nurturing mother and almost angelic spirit, which stands in sharp contrast to her husband's stubborn and rage-prone personality.

When the news about the death comes, Mr. O'Brien responds by doing work around the house and lowering his head through the pain, while his wife takes walks into the woods where she cries out to the heavens for an explanation. Their personalities bleed into their worldviews, too, with the much-described conflict between his "nature" and her "grace" that was highlighted in the trailer.

We then speed ahead to the present day and the character of Jack (Sean Penn), who is the grown-up version of one of the surviving sons. Jack has some kind of fancy architectural job but is plagued by demons, clearly related, though certainly not limited, to the death of his brother as well as his troubled relationship with his father. We get a few minutes of Jack's life, and an overheard snippet on the phone with said parent.

But what feels like standard movie exposition quickly takes a sharp turn when we're feted with about 20 minutes of the elemental and cosmic footage that's been making all the headlines. At first it looks like it could be a depiction of heaven or hell that we're watching, but it soon becomes clear that it's a story of creation -- or of Creation, as some iteration of the Big Bang unfolds before our eyes. Mrs. O'Brien's questioning of the universe has led us to how the universe, indeed, came to be. Meteors rain down, planets constellate, and lava and other geologic matter overflows. We finally end up underwater, where the first signs of life have begun to present themselves. That gives way to a shot of a dinosaur on the beach, which is pretty much the craziest shot in any movie this viewer has seen recently. That is, until the next shot, when a larger dinosaur takes pity -- yes, dinosaurs have emotions here -- on a wounded smaller one.

Then the natural images wrap up, and we are back in mid-century Texas, where we will spend the bulk of the story. This time we have flashed back to two decades before the tragedy, at the origin of a different story -- the O'Briens as they fall in love, have their first child and begin to raise him. There's a tenderness among all three when the child is young, but as the boy grows and two more sons are born, the coldness of Pitt's character becomes more apparent -- he demands a military-school level of obedience from his sons -- and the gap between man and wife, the latter of whom remains a woman of sympathy and softness, widens.

But here's the tough part to describe. Although all of this unfolds in sequence, we see their lives not as we would in conventional scenes, but in morsels and snatches, moments that exist mainly to further our understanding of the characters and their relationships. The movie largely consists of seemingly overheard bits of conversation and stolen looks at these people's lives. And it's episodic -- the boys cause trouble, they go to church, they squabble with one another and, most important, they clash with their father and run into the arms of their mother.

As we see all of this, with Malick interweaving shots of nature (particularly his trademark trees-from-below shots), we also get a host of philosophical questions, often stage-whispered by various characters in voice-over. Despite the Edenic title, the Book of Job is a big theme here, cited explicitly several times and implicitly more often. Indeed, in addition to youth and aging, and love and family, this a movie very much about sadness and suffering.

Toward the end of the film, we get back to Penn's Jack, who at quick moments throughout all this has been shown wandering through various forms of rugged terrain. As Alexandre Desplat's score swells, Jack ends up on a beach, in a scene we won't give away but whose meaning will no doubt be among the most debated of the movie.

Many will no doubt marvel at "Tree of Life" as a metaphysical experience that is also sensual and poetic, although some will probably think it fragmented and showy, and even call it a naked emperor. Malick seems to be saying here that there are many ways to view the world, and it is fitting, perhaps, that there will be an equally wide spectrum of opinions on his film.

I was standing in the right-rear section of the orchestra when The Tree of Life ended and didn't even hear the booing, which reportedly came from the upper balcony. In any event I think it's beastly to boo a film as hauntingly beautiful and immensely ambitious and spiritually directed as this one, and which is so dazzling and transporting during its first half-hour to 40 minutes.

I understand the frustration, mind, because The Tree of Life does lose itself in its own impressionistic quicksand after the first half-hour. It begins to drown, sink, swallow itself. The center cannot hold. But it's entirely worth seeing (and praising) for the portions that clearly and unmistakably deliver. I'm especially referring to what people will soon be calling the 2001/Douglas Trumbull section. Who in the big-budget realm is even trying to make pure art films like this except Malick?

But over time he's been given, I feel, a bit too much freedom and time to do whatever he damn well pleases. There's a part of me that would dearly love to see Malick suffer under a brutal Harry Cohn-like taskmaster producer because as unhappy as that would make him personally, he'd make tougher and more rigorous films.

Malick's staunchly non-linear, 136-minute poem about beauty and Godliness suppressed and the unfortunate legacy of brutal paternal parenting in the 1950s is a sad and beautiful...wank? The ultimate refutation of narrative? An often captivating but rudderless impressionistic exercise?

Yes, I know I twittered the last passage only minutes after emerging from the theatre, but it came out well and on-target so there.

I understand why distributors and exhibitors were apoplectic about this thing last year. It's not going to sell a lot of popcorn. Or tickets, for that matter. But fuck those guys. The Tree of Life is, of course, essential viewing if you care at all about movies that aspire to more than showing us Johnny Depp mugging and rolling his eyes and pocketing another paycheck.

You know what? I'm just going to re-run and in some instances re-write my tweets and possibly elaborate here and there:

Tweet #1: "Terrence Malick made The Tree of Life in this free-flowing, free-associative way because he could, because he doesn't have Bert and Harold Schneider riding his ass in post, and because God told him to...like it or lump it." That's pretty much on the money. I adore hundred of things that Malick captured in The Thin Red Line and The New World, but there was more discipline in Days of Heaven because (I've read) of Bert and Harold, and Badlands was just as tight.

Tweet #2: "Terrence Malick needs a trainer, a tough collaborator, a friend with a stick. No such luck.This movie is the fault of his many enablers."

Tweet #3: "The first half-hour of The Tree of Life is magnificent. But then it begins to dissipate because the center cannot hold. Airy fairy.

Tweet #4: "The Tree of Life should have been shorter. It's the first ten minutes of The Thin Red Line -- meditative, jungle-leafy, reptile in water -- only set in 1950s suburban Texas" -- the film was primarily shot in Smithville, about 40 miles southest of Austin -- "rather than an island in the South Pacific."

Tweet #5: "Shorter Tree of Life: Life sure could be symphonically, heart-stoppingly beautiful if it wasn't for my hard-ass, totally frustrated, spirit-suffocating dad" -- i.e., Brad Pitt's character. Imagine The Tree of Life without those tree shots, those kick-the-can moments, Jessica Chastain's looks of disdain for Brad Pitt, etc." I can't. But there are an awful of those tree shots. Scores. This must be acknowledged because I think it's overdone.

Tweet #5: "Don't get me wrong -- The Tree of Life is, at times, transcendent poetry. I'm glad I saw it, but I'm not sure if I'll buy/get the Bluray."

If nothing else The Tree of Life is one prolonged Emanuel Lubezski orgasm. Every shot is captivating, sublime, amazing, heavenly.

I love this passage from Justin Chang's Variety review: "[At] roughly 20 minutes in The Tree of Life undergoes arguably the most extreme temporal shift in the history of cinema. Comparisons to 2001: A Space Odyssey are perhaps intended, not least because Stanley Kubrick's special-effects creator Douglas Trumbull served as a visual consultant on Malick's eye-candy evocation of the dawn of time (conceived by several visual-effects houses but designed with minimal reliance on CGI).

"We observe a flurry of awe-inspiring images at astronomical, biological, macro- and microscopic levels: a nebula expanding in outer space; cells multiplying in a frenzy; a school of shimmering jellyfish; darkness illuminated by a volcanic eruption; a bubbling primordial ooze."

Pitt plays the villain, all right, and delicate, red-haired Jessica Chastain plays his tender, spirited, angel-like wife. Their taxed and tormented son Jack is played an adolescent by Hunter McCracken, and as an adult by Sean Penn (who's barely in the film, and has maybe five or six lines).

There's a young blonde kid who plays McCracken's younger brother, and who resembles Brad Pitt quite unmistakably. It's almost like he's Pitt's actual son, which is all but unheard of in movies. There's one rule that Hollywood casting agents seem to go by when casting families, and that's to never, ever allow for the faintest resemblance between on-screen parents and children. On this point alone The Tree of Life deserves high praise.

Still not terribly excited in seeing this, but I will.